


What The Right Hand Is Doing

by Mike_Smith



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 17:01:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14958545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mike_Smith/pseuds/Mike_Smith
Summary: Behind enemy lines, Good Launch has to get herself out of another fine mess that Bad Launch has gotten herself into.  Or does she?





	What The Right Hand Is Doing

**Author's Note:**

> Blonde Disclaimer: This story features characters from Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation. This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.
> 
> Blue Continuity Note: This story is set during the 130-day period in Episode 107 of Dragon Ball Z, after Porunga revives Krillin and Yamcha, but before Tien and Chiaotzu. 
> 
> This is for @launchweek 2018, Day 7: Birthday

_**[17 June, Age 763.  Earth.]** _

Launch found herself in a darkened room, holding a machine gun in one hand and a piece of paper in the other.   Her pulse was racing, and she was out of breath.  The gentle throb in her quadriceps suggested that she had just been running.   The sound of footsteps and angry voices outside told her that she had been running for her life.  

She didn’t understand any of it, but that was a familiar feeling to her by now.  

Launch’s first action was to inhale sharply through her nose.   She had just sneezed, and sometimes she could make herself do it again.  Her left nostril felt a little irritated, and if she could just give it a little push then–

“Which way did she go?”  

“Radio the boss and tell her we’re splitting up.  You three are with me, the rest of you check that way.  Move it!”

The good news was that her pursuers had passed the room without noticing her, so she had a little time to figure this out.   The bad news was that she wasn’t sneezing, which meant she had to deal with this as she was.  

For as long as Launch could remember, she had shared her life with her other self.  When she sneezed, she would become a whole other person, violent and ill-tempered.   When she sneezed again, that Launch would change back.   Neither Launch was able to remember what the other had experienced, which precipitated a lot of confusion.  

She had no idea _why_ she was like this.  Indeed, it had taken her a long time to realize that there was anything unusual about herself.  As a child, Launch thought _everyone_ had random gaps in their memory.   When she was older, she learned that she was a different person during these gaps.   Strangely, the transformation was more than just in her mind; her very hair would change from blue to blonde, and her eyes changed color from brown to green.  

It was a mystery, but one that didn’t particularly concern her.  The world had many wonders, and for better or worse, she was apparently one of them.  Her friends were strange in their own ways.   Puar and Oolong were shape-shifters.   Master Roshi, the Turtle Hermit, had lived for hundreds of years, and his ancient wisdom was belied by his base lechery.  Son Goku had a tail, at least until it was permanently removed.  Tien Shinhan had a third eye in his forehead.  She wished he was here right now.   She wished _any_ of them were here, but especially Tien.

There was no use in wishing, though.   Her other self had gotten her into countless situations like these, and she had always managed to figure something out before.   She took a deep breath and focused on what she could remember.  

Almost two years ago, the Earth had been invaded by a Saiyan, an alien warrior who revealed that Son Goku was actually one of them.  Goku defeated him, but only with the help of his worst enemy, Piccolo, and only by sacrificing his own life.  That was no great crisis in itself.  The seven magic Dragon Balls could be used to revive Goku, but the Saiyan invader revealed that two more of his comrades would arrive to finish what he had begun.  So Goku remained dead, in order to train in the afterlife until he could be revived to confront the threat.  In the meantime, Goku’s allies, including Tien were summoned to Kami’s Lookout to train on their own.

Launch was saddened to part with Tien, though her other self took it much harder.   She remembered finding herself in the Land of Korin, directly beneath Kami’s Lookout in the sky.  Her blonde self had tried to find some way to follow Tien, but it had been no use.  She wished that her other self _had_ succeeded.   While she respected Tien’s desire to train in solitude, she didn’t mind so much that her other self did not.  For much of that year, Launch wished that she would sneeze and look up to see Tien’s face.  

Instead, she sneezed and found that Tien had been killed.  When the fateful day arrived, the two Saiyans killed not only Tien, Chiaotzu, and Yamcha, but Piccolo and Kami as well.   It was Kami’s life force that sustained the Dragon Balls, and so his death caused them to become ordinary stones.   Goku had returned and managed to drive off the invaders, but only just.  It had taken a while for Launch to piece the whole story together, but Tien’s death had been covered by news agencies, so the worst of it wasn’t hard to find out.  Later, she learned that her friends had gone on an expedition to Kami’s homeworld to find new Dragon Balls.   They had managed to bring them back to Earth, but these alien Dragon Balls worked differently from the terrestrial version, and Tien and Chiaotzu couldn’t be revived right away.   Sometime in November, that was what Bulma had told her.  

Suddenly, Launch realized she didn’t know the date.   She checked the contents of her pockets and found she was wearing the army fatigue pants her other self had stolen from a surplus store.  It wasn’t her favorite look, but under the circumstances she didn’t mind.   Shorts and a tank top wouldn’t do in hostile territory.  At last she fished out a cellular phone which displayed the date: June 17, her birthday.  

She had lost three weeks.

To be sure, she recalled a few minutes here or there during those three weeks.   Her other self had sneezed a few times, only for her to sneeze almost immediately afterward.   That happened a lot.   Sometimes it went the other way, and her present self was the one in control for most of the time.  Neither personality could control it, so there was no point in worrying about it.   She didn’t know why she was like this, but at least the sneezing aspect was impartial.  There was no way to plot against the other personality for control.   Even if there was a foolproof way to control sneezing, there was no way to make certain that you could sneeze exactly once and not again for a long time.  

She didn’t know her other self very well.   Most of what she knew was from what her friends had told her.   The Blonde Launch was something of a thrill-seeker, while she, the Blue Launch, tended to be passive and easygoing.   You had to be easygoing to live a life like this, so completely unable to take control of your own fate.  Blonde Launch was a criminal, robbing banks and terrorizing anyone who got in her way, but there was no particular plan or agenda to it.  There was no point in building a criminal empire or enrolling in night school when a single sneeze could disrupt the whole plan.  All you could do was live in the moment.  The Blue Launch stopped and smelled the roses; the Blonde Launch ran wild.

She supposed that was what attracted her to Tien.   As far as she could tell, they both liked him.   That made him a constant, something very rare in their disparate lives.  He was both violent and stoic, and somehow he managed to balance himself.   He was a solitary man, but so was she, although for different reasons.   She couldn’t be sure he felt the same way about her, but it excited her to speculate.

She wished it was November.  She wished Tien was alive, not just so she could see him again, but for the sake of her other self.   Tien’s death had hit the Blonde Launch hard.   That was strange to say, though, since they were the same person.   Was it more accurate to say that they had both been hit hard, and the Blonde Launch was the only one to express it?  Was the Blue Launch feeling the same pain and failing to express it?   Was she forcing that grief onto her other self?  Was that what the Blonde Launch was?   A safety valve to think and feel and act out the things the Blue Launch couldn’t?    Or was the Blonde Launch the original, and the Blue was the coping mechanism she had created?  

It wasn’t worth worrying about.   There were no answers.  She was as much an enigma as Tien’s third eye.   Perhaps they were both aliens like Son Goku.  Perhaps Launch’s people were just like her, or maybe they were as wicked as the Saiyans.  Maybe the three-eyed aliens fought a war with the dual personality aliens, and Tien and Launch were all that remained.   It was a romantic thought, but all that really mattered was that the Blonde Launch got in less trouble when Tien was around.   She still robbed banks, but at least she spent most of her time following Tien instead of getting in over her head.  But after he died…

She remembered waking up drunk last year, her face hot and wet with fresh tears.  Her other self had been burning stacks of hundred-zenie bills in a fireplace.  She didn’t let the Blonde Launch’s crimes bother her much because she couldn’t control them, but this had frightened her.   After the Saiyan invasion, after Tien’s death, it seemed that the Blonde Launch had sunk into a deep depression.  At the very least, she had decided that money was worthless, and if she wasn’t interested in stealing, then the Blue Launch had no idea what the Blonde Launch intended to do.  

Six months ago, she had found herself in the middle of an empty field.   Her other self had driven out there in a stolen hovercar and stopped.   The engine was cold.  Blonde Launch had been sitting there alone for hours before sneezing.   That had been frightening too, though Blue Launch didn’t quite understand what it meant.   In a way, waking up in some unknown location, being chased by enemies was comforting in a way.   At least it was something resembling normal.  

The trouble was that she had no idea what this enemy location was, or why her other self had come here.   The simplest course of action would be to try to escape.  If her other self had a mission here, she had no interest in carrying it out.  While she tolerated the robberies, she didn’t want to participate.   Her other self seemed to understand that, she thought.  If she managed to sneeze again before getting out of this place, then so be it.  The Blonde Launch could do as she pleased.   That was the way things had always worked.  

Using the display on her phone as a flashlight, she found a desk lamp and turned it on.   The room appeared to be an armory.  Her machine gun and ammunition belts seemed positively quaint compared to the ordinance stored here.   Assault rifles, grenade launchers, mines, and other weapons covered almost every surface of the room.   She knelt before a crate and laid down her own gun so she could look at the paper she had been holding.   It was a map, presumably of the building she was in.   Launch looked it over for several minutes, struggling to make sense of the red markings.    The room she was in had been circled, and near it was the path where the guards had split up.  Eventually, she figured out her other self’s exit strategy.  There was a ventilation shaft that led to a lake, and that area didn’t look too heavily guarded.  She reached into the collar of her black T-shirt and felt around for a moment until she confirmed that she was wearing a swimsuit under her clothes.   The Blonde Launch planned to swim for it, and then use some vehicle once she was far enough away to avoid being spotted.  

All she had to do now was find the vehicle and figure out the rest of the plan. She lacked the skills of her other self, but they shared the same body and the same possessions, so she was confident that she could use the same escape plan.  If anything, it would be easier, since she would be leaving without the prize.   The guards wouldn’t expect that, and she wouldn’t be weighed down by whatever the Blonde Launch had some here to steal.   Feeling a little more confident in her chances, Launch emptied her pockets and laid the contents on the map.   She needed to know what she had to work with.   Soon enough, she found a small case containing Capsules.  Manufactured by the Capsule Corporation, these devices could store large objects in a container the size of a medicine bottle.  One of them was labeled “GETAWAY”, and Launch recognized the number as corresponding to an amphibious car.

“I guess this won’t be so bad after all,” she said as she removed the capsule from the case.  When she did, a folded up piece of paper fell out and onto the floor.

Curious, she picked it up and unfolded it to see what it was.   Maybe Capsule Corp. had included a manual for the car?   She took it to the desk to get as much light on it as possible, and then she realized it wasn’t an instruction manual at all, but a handwritten note.    

> **YO, BLUE**
> 
> **IF YOUR READING THIS, YOU MUST BE INSIDE THE BASE.**
> 
> **IT AIN’T A HEIST!!!!!   I SWEAR**
> 
> **THEiR MERCENARIES, SHAKIN DOWN ALL THE TOWNS IN the AREA**
> 
> **EX-RED RIBBON GOONS I tHINK**
> 
> **THOUGHT I’D TEACH EM A LESSON SINCE GOKU + TIEN AIN’T AROUND TO HANDLE IT**
> 
> **WAS GONNA BLOW UP THEIR HIDEOUT B4 they COULD PULL ANOTHER RAID  
>  **
> 
> **BOMBS ARE IN CAPSULE #69 (NICE!) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)**
> 
> **MAP SHOWS WHERE 2 PUT EM**
> 
> **SUCKS TO ROPE U INTO THIS BUT be a PAL**
> 
> **ARE WE PALS?   I NEVER THUOGHT ABOUT IT BEFORE**
> 
> **PLEASE?**

The note wasn’t signed, but there was no need.   Launch recognized her own handwriting immediately.   

It was unsettling to read words she couldn’t remember writing.    They had never communicated this way before.   What would have been the point?  Neither Launch knew when the next sneeze would come.  Just this once, her other self had a goal so important that she felt she needed to ask for cooperation in advance, just in case she sneezed at a critical moment.  

For a surreal moment, she just let it all sink in.   After thinking it over, she decided that she really did want to help.  There was the chance that Blonde Launch wasn’t telling the truth, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it.  They were opposites, certainly, but they had never deceived each other before.   They were one person, and neither side could afford to breach that trust.  

But why did either of them want to get involved in something like this?  Why now?  Maybe Tien had more of an effect on her than she had realized.  Not just her other self, but the Blue Launch as well.  Over time, she had changed, perhaps so subtly that no one could have noticed.  What good was money in the midst of an alien invasion?  What good was stopping to smell the roses?  Tien had understood this, which was why he answered the call to fight the Saiyans, even to the bitter end.  Goku’s selfless attitude had rubbed off on him, and perhaps, in turn, it had rubbed off on Launch as well.  

Maybe the world would still end.   If not the Saiyans, then some other alien might come to destroy it all, and maybe Goku and Tien wouldn’t be strong enough to stop it.   Maybe it was all for nothing.  Maybe Launch might sneeze one last time and the other Launch would become permanent, and she would be lost forever.  Maybe everything was doomed, and this was the end.

But not yet.  As long as there was one more day, there was still something that could be done.   Something worthwhile, no matter how small.  She could try.  

She folded up the note and put gathered her things, then took another look at the map.   She wasn’t sure how to set up the bombs, or whether she could swim the lake without being spotted, but she would figure it out somehow.  There was always the chance that she might sneeze again and that would solve everything.   The Blonde Launch could take care of things as she had originally planned.  

But as she studied the map, she hoped that sneeze wouldn’t come.   She kind of wanted to handle this herself.

**THE END.**


End file.
